Aug
19
Written by:
Dylan Barber
8/19/2009 12:38 AM
Been buried in work for awhile so this blog post has been festering in the back of my mind for a few weeks now. My full time job has lately been taking up a bit of my usual free time with extra employees coming on and new clients coming on but the one area we seem to be having real luck with is how we can quickly train new users and new clients to use the software. I think the way we have built our modules for use could serve as a lesson for others looking to build modules for ‘non techie’ users.
Early in development of our online safety management system I used the normal drop down menu on the container and used the settings or implement the menu interface to add a menu to the container menu for managing the module and what we considered its ‘Corporate’ administration functions. Usually these functions consist of setting up lists and setting parameters for employees further down the chain to manage a safety program. Out initial tests with the management of the modules in this manner was a dismal failure. Many of our users simply didn’t understand the concept. Some were very computer savvy but many of our users we found were familiar with Word and/or Excel where a menu item does a function and does not have multiple purposes.
With this initial UI failure we quickly switched over to our menu having a ‘Administration’ section where our users could set up the lists and parameters of the different modules in a central area. This was a huge success! Not only was it easy to tell our users where to go they had very few options when they got there so the administration of the site became very self explanatory in some ways, the module logic itself can sometimes be complicated so training was still necessary. We have also found that we can control what roles can use different ‘Corporate’ administration functions with a finer level of control than was available with the container menu control and it has a cleaner interface in general.
I would propose that other developers may want to consider modules that need to have a administration function accessed by non techie users may want to consider building the administration screens as a separate module so it can be placed on a specific page for access by different roles of users, or even specific users if needed. Yes this is more work, but in my opinion this is a more flexible solution than the default menu interface DNN provides. In some ways I think may also be one of the reasons that some people feel like DNN is less than optimal solution for content management. Perhaps changing the model in DNN 6 may make DNN easier to use for those people who don’t seem to ‘get’ how DNN works.
What do you think? Many other DNN developers out there have come up with solutions for this exact problem which one works best for you?